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ADDRESS 

DELIVEREB BEFORE T H!E 

Dui'CHEss County Society in 
i HE City of Xew York, 



MAR<n 2«>Tir, 1897 




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AN ADDRESS 






Delivered by Hon. ALFRED T. ACKERT at a Banquet 

GIVEN AT THE MURRAY HiLL HoTEL, IN THE CiTY OF NeW 

York, March 26th, 1S97, in Commemoration of the For- 
mation OF " The Dutchess County Society in the City 
of New York." 



Mr. President and Members of the Society: 

I congratulate those who conceived the formation of 
this Society. I congratulate those w^ho have made this 
entertainment so enjoyable. I congratulate myself that 
I had the good fortune to be born and reared in Dutchess 
County and thereby eligible to membership. 

It is said that 

" He who cares not from whence he came 
Cares not whither he goeth." 

Persons of such indifference as to their origin are not 
organizing societies to perpetuate the memories of the 
past, neither do they care for the inevitable future. 

" They come and go, 
Mere walking flesh piles without heart or head. 
Snatched from this busy earth. Who'd miss them? — none." 

We meet here to-night to celebrate the formation of 
the Dutchess County Society in the City of New York, 
that the friendship of the past may be renewed, and to 
form new friendships, and it is fitting that those from 
whom we have our being, our ancestors, should be 
remembered. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity and 
honor of responding to so worthy a sentiment, "Our 
Ancestors." 

Of course, I do not possess the historical and genea- 



logical knowledge to sketch the ancestry of the individ- 
ual membership here associated, other than that we are 
all sons of Dutchess County either by birth or adoption. 

Time will not permit, and the subject does not re- 
quire, a review of the political divisions of our State and 
county. The county included at first, or in 1683, when 
the State was divided into several counties, all south of 
Rolof Jansen Creek, in Columbia, (then Albany County) 
to Westchester County, and extending twenty miles in- 
land from Hudson River, and divided into three wards, 
North, South and Middle, and subsequently these were 
divided into precincts. 

What is now Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and part of 
Hyde Park was designated as Rhinebeck Precinct, and 
this portion of the county contained in 1722, more tax- 
able inhabitants than the remainder of the county. 

Who first settled within the county it would be impos- 
sible to state with certainty. They were probably fami- 
lies who came from the east across the boundaries of 
Connecticut, and some from Ulster and Orange Coun- 
ties across the river. The Society of Friends or Quakers 
made early settlements from Long Island, giving their 
peaceful character and worth to the community. But 
the largest and most important settlements were made 
by refugees from the Palatinate of the Rhine in Germany, 
and it is to these people, and to the Friends, that 
Dutchess County owes its early start as one of the most 
important agricultural counties of our State, and it is 
from these people that many of us here to-night can 
trace our origin. 

The most of our ancestors came into the county as 
lessees and were not grantees of the soil. Cunning and 
avaricious men had preceded them and absorbed the 
land under patents, and they had to look to landlords 
for land. The first leases were life leases, some perpet- 
ual, at an average yearly quit-rent of a schepel of wheat 



for the acre or about thirty bushels for a farm of about 
one hundred acres, including, perhaps, one or more pair 
of fowls for the landlord, and one or more days' riding 
of wood for the landlord, to be delivered at the Mansion 
House. Thus these people were doomed at the start to 
an almost earthly bondage. 

Go with me back to this time and consider the cir- 
cumstances and the surroundings which were presented 
to these poor Palatines whom I have especially in mind, 
and from whom some of us claim descent. The coun- 
try was comparatively a wilderness. The Indian savage 
roamed unmolested through the woodland. Their wig- 
wams dotted the hilltops. The cry of the panther and 
barking of the wolves was heard through the solitary 
hours of night. The Indian was a constant menace. 

Here in their rudely constructed houses, made of logs 
or stone, these first settlers began a new life, in a new 
land. The Old World, with its persecutions and sorrows 
and trials, was behind them. This was now to be their 
earthly home. They cut down the trees, dug out the 
stumps, broke up the new ground and otherwise im- 
proved their farms. They did not forget to build the 
log church and school. The tread of hostile armies 
marching and re-marching with the torch of conflagra- 
tion that had devastated and destroyed their homes in 
the Old World, had prepared and strengthened them to 
suffer and endure the hardships and privations of the 
New. 

Who has considered without a pang of sadness the 
story of these Palatines, which only exists in manu- 
script and tradition ; of their emigration in the early part 
of the last century from the Continent of Europe to 
England, numbering over thirty thousand, and thence 
under the protecting care of Queen Anne, of glorious 
memory, their final emigration and settlement in the 
wilderness of America and in other parts of her Majesty's 



dominions? More than three thousand landed here in 
New York during the Summer of 17 lo. A few families 
had preceded them and had settled at Newburgh on the 
Hudson; others followed. Over two thousand settled 
temporarily in camps in the Fall of the year of 17 10 
at what is now Germantown, and Saugerties on the 
Hudson. 

These poor Palatines were an honest, industrious, but 
isolated people. They could not speak the language of 
the government, which was English; they did not even 
understand it; they were mostly Germans, modest and 
unpretentious. The Dutch and English had preceded 
them, and were masters of the situation. Government 
officials conceived the idea that the settlement of these 
people on the borders would constitute an excellent 
protection to the older settlements against the rav- 
ages of the French and Indians, and many of them did 
settle on the frontier where the tomahawk and scalping- 
knife crimsoned the waters of the Mohawk and the 
Hudson with their blood. More than thirty-five fam- 
ilies of these people settled in the North Ward of 
Dutchess County, and they gave the name of Rhine- 
beck to the precinct. They possessed a will to endure, 
and a purpose to remain steadfast, through all their 
struggles and trials. They were God's people in God's 
wilderness. They committed no wrong. They perse- 
cuted no one for opinion's sake. Peace on earth and 
good will toward men filled the measure of their earthly 
ambition. 

Unlike the Pilgrim Fathers of New England and the 
Dutch founders of New Amsterdam, they have had no 
orators and historians to impress with undying eloquence 
on history's page their sad story. No poets have chanted 
their praises for their unfaltering faith and trust in God. 

The silent records of the Church in baptism, in mar- 
riage, at the communion altar, in Christian death and 



burial, speak for them more eloquently than the tongue 
of a Webster or an Everett ; by that record a song is sung 
sweeter than the pen of a Longfellow or a Whittier ever 
wrote. More than six generations of our ancestry sleep 
beneath the soil of our beloved county; why should we 
not love her, respect her, honor her? The stones that 
marked their early graves are crumbling into dust, but 
the memories of those who sleep live in the hearts of 
their descendants, growing brighter and brighter with 
the lapse of time. 

Worldly ostentation ; inordinate extravagance in the 
use of wealth, are not conducive to the happiness of a 
people. Great problems of social order will again con- 
front our race; man's rights on earth are founded on 
, principles of equality and justice, and mankind will 
vindicate those principles. Vox populi, vox Dei. 

Splendid display; the pompous exhibition of great 
inheritance; the flaunting of gilded sloth in the presence 
of laboring industrial life, has a tendency to irritate the 
less worldly fortunate, and make unhappy and discon- 
tented those communities where people live by honest, 
manly toil. Moreover, seemingly inconsistent with 
those Democratic-Republican principles of simplicity 
and equality which form the foundation walls on which 
rest the structure of our American Republic, 

' * Ye men of truth, ye statesmen who survey 
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay; 
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limit span 
Between a splendid and a happy land." 

Let us then revere and honor the memory of our 
ancestors of whatever nationality or clime they came, 
and who have made the county of our birth one of the 
foremost in the land in all that pertains to the welfare 
and happiness of a people. 

They did not build magnificent mansions on the earth 
for the gaze and admiration of our own and future 



generations, or lay up fabulous treasure to demoralize 
the age in which we live; but I believe that the injunc- 
tion of Him in whom they trusted in their journey 
through this life they obeyed as truthfully and faith- 
fully as the light that was given them to see the way, 
and that they now enjoy those blessings vouchsafed to 
those who devoutly labor to enter into those mansions 

above, 

" An house, not made with hands, 
Eternal in the heavens." 



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